The War Terror eBook

CHAPTER XXXIII

I did not see Kennedy again that day until late in
the afternoon, when he came into the laboratory carrying
a small package.

“Theory is one thing, practice is another,”
he remarked, as he threw his hat and coat into a chair.

“Which means—­in this case?”
I prompted.

“Why, I have just seen Atherton. Of course
I didn’t repeat our conversation of this morning,
and I’m glad I didn’t. He almost
makes me think you are right, Walter. He’s
obsessed by the fear of Burroughs. Why, he even
told me that Burroughs had gone so far as to take
a leaf out of his book, so to speak, get in touch with
the Eugenics Bureau as if to follow his footsteps,
but really to pump them about Atherton himself.
Atherton says it’s all Burroughs’ plan
to break his will and that the fellow has even gone
so far as to cultivate the acquaintance of Maude Schofield,
knowing that he will get no sympathy from Crafts.”

“First it was Edith Atherton, now it is Maude
Schofield that he hitches up with Burroughs,”
I commented. “Seems to me that I have heard
that one of the first signs of insanity is belief that
everyone about the victim is conspiring against him.
I haven’t any love for any of them—­but
I must be fair.”

“Well,” said Kennedy, unwrapping the package,
“there is this much to it. Atherton
says Burroughs and Maude Schofield have been seen
together more than once—­and not at intellectual
gatherings either. Burroughs is a fascinating
fellow to a woman, if he wants to be, and the Schofields
are at least the social equals of the Burroughs.
Besides,” he added, “in spite of eugenics,
feminism, and all the rest—­sex, like murder,
will out. There’s no use having any false
ideas about that. Atherton may see red—­but,
then, he was quite excited.”

“Over what?” I asked, perplexed more than
ever at the turn of events.

“He called me up in the first place. ‘Can’t
you do something?’ he implored. ‘Eugenia
is getting worse all the time.’ She is,
too. I saw her for a moment, and she was even
more vacant than yesterday.”

The thought of the poor girl in the big house somehow
brought over me again my first impression of Poe’s
story.

Kennedy had unwrapped the package which proved to
be the instrument he had left in the closet at Atherton’s.
It was, as I had observed, like an ordinary wax cylinder
phonograph record.

“You see,” explained Kennedy, “it
is nothing more than a successful application at last
of, say, one of those phonographs you have seen in
offices for taking dictation, placed so that the feebler
vibrations of the telephone affect it. Let us
see what we have here.”

He had attached the cylinder to an ordinary phonograph,
and after a number of routine calls had been run off,
he came to this, in voices which we could only guess
at but not recognize, for no names were used.